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Ray Dressely and Cy Oberholtzer Photos courtesy of Melissa Dressely
After two runs, Cy Oberholtzer navigated the slalom course’s tight turns and steep descent faster than everyone else at the Koo Koo Invite to take individual honors. Not far behind Cy was his teammate, Ray Dressely. Still, despite taking first and second, the boys’ team was edged by mighty Duluth East for the team championship.
“After the first run, we had dreams of a clean podium sweep,” said Head Coach John Oberholtzer. “Ben Obinger had a great first run and was in third place behind Cy and Ray. However, Ben crashed on his second run, and we lost to Duluth East by seven points.”
Goshi Dimitrov placed sixth, Andrew Hallberg 24th, Graham Oberholtzer 22nd, Rylen Brown 24th, Finn Taylor 32nd, and Hans Melhaf 37th out of more than 60 skiers.
Genevieve Silence’s fourth place led the girls’ team to a third-place finish out of eight teams. Duluth East won the girls’ competition with 171 points. Sophia Blanck finished eighth, Anabelle Silence 21st, Ruby Gulstrand 31st, and Liv Hedstrom crashed after her first run and didn’t finish. The girls were skiing without Kalina Dimitrova, who qualified for state last year. A wrist injury has her sidelined for another two weeks or so, said Oberholtzer.
Sophia Blank
Conditions were perfect, 13F and firm snow on a freshly groomed Koo Koo, said Oberholtzer.
“This was our first meet of the season, and the kids did fantastic,” said Oberholtzer. “This year, we are racing all of our kids in the varsity. As a result, we are seeing quite a bit of improvement from our younger skiers. Goshi is just a ninth grader, but he’s extremely strong and so acrobatic you can’t knock him down. He can be off balance in the air and land on his feet. He’s exciting to watch.
“Ben Hallberg has also been improving. So has Finn, Graham, Rylan, all of the boys and the girls, Genevieve, Sophia, Liv, Anabelle, and Ruby. It will be fun to see how the girls’ team does when Kalina returns. I know she’s itching to race.”
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